Awarded second place in the 2013 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards in the Critical Care-Emergency Nursing category.

Awarded second place in the 2013 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards in the Public Interest and Creative Works category.

"There is no night in the ICU. There is day, lesser day, then day again. There are rhythms. Every twelve hours: shift change. Report: first all together in the big room, then at the bedside, nurse to nurse. Morning rounds. A group of doctors moves slowly through the unit like a harrow through a field. At each room, like a game, a different one rotates into the center. They leave behind a trail of new orders. Wean, extubate, titrate, start this, stop that, scan, film, scope. The steep hill the patient is asked to climb. Can you breathe on your own? Can you wake up? Can you live?"—from Where Night Is Day

Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average rotation of residents through the ICU. It begins in September and ends at Christmas. It is the story of patients and families, suddenly faced with critical illness, who find themselves in the ICU. It describes how they navigate through it and find their way. James Kelly is a sensitive witness to the quiet courage and resourcefulness of ordinary people.

Kelly leads the reader into a parallel world: the world of illness. This world, invisible but not hidden, not articulated by but known by the ill, does not readily offer itself to our understanding. In this context, Kelly reflects on the nature of medicine and nursing, on how doctors and nurses see themselves and how they see each other. Drawing on the words of medical historians, doctor-writers, and nursing scholars, Kelly examines the relationship of professional and lay observers to the meaning of illness, empathy, caring, and the silence of suffering. Kelly offers up an intimate portrait of the ICU and its inhabitants.

Introduction
1. The Voyage into the Sea of Critical Illness
2. Diagnosis, Diagnosis, Diagnosis
3. Nursing Isn't a Journey
4. One More Day
5. The Dream of Cure
6. Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not
7. Caring
8. Medicine as Ghost Rain
9. Dying
10. Poetic and Tragic Murmurings of the Everyday
11. They Tell Us Everything
12. Can They Hear?
13. Leaving Ends the Love
14. The Horizon

Epilogue
Notes

Press Reviews

Where Night Is Day

"This book is a must read for all nursing and medical students. Here, critical care nurse Kelly shares his experiences in an ICU in New Mexico over a 13-week period. He also perfectly describes the experiences of the ICU patients and their families—what they see, do, and reflect on during this time. Lastly, he discusses his interactions with physicians, and explains how nurses and doctors collaborate to accomplish the common goals of keeping patients comfortable, sedated, and alive. Kelly

successfully depicts 'the good' and 'the bad' of ICUs. He tells the stories of individual patients and families, and describes the ICU subculture in a graphic, realistic manner. He conveys the nurse's perspective on the grueling experience of having to make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis. He clearly shows how emotional, and sometimes unemotional, a nurse must be to survive this type of professional setting. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice (October 2013)

Where Night Is Day

"James Kelly's telling of life in an ICU provides a unique perspective on the daily realities of critical care professionals. . . . He seamlessly integrates the complexities of critical care and of the organizational politics surrounding the ICU. Experienced and novice health care professionals will find this work to be entertaining, humbling, and thought provoking, while lay readers can learn from the complex realities of critical care. Kelly perceptively articulates what it means to

experience daily life and death in the critical care environment. His compelling story will capture your attention, cover to cover."—Citation from from the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award Committee (Critical Care-Emergency Nursing Section)

Where Night Is Day

"This revealing personal account blends the day-to-day drama of life in the ICU with a fascinating history of medicine, hospitals, nursing, and intensive care—told through the eyes of Kelly, a critical care nurse at Lovelace Women's Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, over a twelve-week period in the ICU.... The evocative language puts the reader in Kelly’s shoes—in the halls and bedsides of the ICU."—Jessica Bylander, Health Affairs (December 2013)

Experts

"James Kelly's ICU is a relentless and claustrophobic space where all the stories begin in the middle and only some have endings. His book is an exhilarating and humbling depiction of nursing in the twenty-first century."—Arthur W. Frank, author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics and Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology

"James Kelly provides an exceptionally thoughtful narrative of the modern intensive care unit. He characterizes the rhythms of the ICU and captures odd juxtapositions of the deeply emotional and highly technical, while he explores the complex history and unspoken social hierarchy of American hospitals. Through the experience of caring for critically ill patients and their families, he ultimately delivers a moving meditation on life and death."—Peter Clardy, MD, Director, Medical Intensive Care, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School

"Where Night Is Day will be of interest to doctors, nurses, medical and nursing students, patients, and those interested in the organization of health care delivery. This excellent and compelling book marries theory to observation. James Kelly has created an intriguing presentation of social science thought about the health professions and illness, the socialization process of medical and nursing students, a clinical ethnographic study of life in an ICU, and an auto-ethnography."—Brian Hodges, MD, PhD, FRCPC, University of Toronto, coeditor of The Question of Competence: Reconsidering Medical Education in the Twenty-First Century